U.S. learned little from the Vietnam War

Thursday

Jun 19, 2014 at 12:01 AMJun 20, 2014 at 9:31 AM

I read with interest the Friday op-ed commentaries by Gwynne Dyer ("Iraqi army proves worthless in fighting extremists") and David Harsanyi ("U.S. has little to show for invasion of Iraq"). The news coming out of Iraq the past several days tells of the Iraqi army crumbling under the attacks by ISIS jihadis:

I read with interest the Friday op-ed commentaries by Gwynne Dyer (“Iraqi army proves worthless in fighting extremists”) and David Harsanyi (“U.S. has little to show for invasion of Iraq”). The news coming out of Iraq the past several days tells of the Iraqi army crumbling under the attacks by ISIS jihadis:

Cities falling, thousands of refugees fleeing, Iraqi army personnel shedding their uniforms and abandoning their posts and equipment.

I feel great empathy for the U.S. Iraq war veterans who fought for years, serving and sacrificing, only to see the gains from those sacrifices disintegrate before their eyes.

Territory they fought for over the years is now being lost to the enemy.

The reason I say I feel for our Iraq veterans is that I’m a Vietnam veteran. We who served there went through the same discouraging experience.

We served and sacrificed only to see, after the U.S. withdrawal in 1973, South Vietnam fall two years later, with a North Vietnamese tank crashing through the gates of the Presidential Palace in Saigon.

During the final push of the North Vietnamese in 1975, we watched as the South Viet-

namese army disintegrated, abandoning their posts and equipment and shedding their uniforms to blend in with the civilian population to join the hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Different war, different country, different era, but it appears that the results are going to be the same. Like they say, history repeats itself. What a shame and a waste.